You are certainly free to do as you wish... But, having openened the topic for opinions, here's mine for your consideration... Seems like it would be easiest (and free) to just squash the 5 bugs and their eggs. You've already done the hard part - finding them. I assume you are growing potatoes to save money or to have fresh organic ones. The $ you spent on Sevin is probably more than the cost of any potatoes you might lose by not using it. If you want to eat food that had carbaryl on it, it seems easier to just buy them and leave the chemicals to the professionals. You could investigate a companion plant for the potatoes that would attract a predator of the beetles. Whatever you decide, best of luck to you and your potatoes! Here is a link that might be useful: Sevin is not an entity I wish to support or perpetuate

CPBs are a mystery to me, one year there are none and the next they go hog wild. Some years I have ladybugs out earlier than others relative to the CPB but don't see much correlation to the severity of the CPB problems from year to year. too bad I can't turn the chickens loose in the spuds, they'd do more damage than the CPBs. Dr. Whitney Cranshaw from CSU once explained to me an insect that they have problems with on tomato along the Front Range of CO. The appearance of the insects had everything to do with south winds at a certain time of the spring or early summer, no winds, no problem that year. Sorry, can't remember the insect. As far as educating people about any growing method I TRY to shut up unless asked and watch for responses both verbal and non before proceeding. You can lead a horse to water you know. Ever try to force a horse to drink? Why try knowing what the result may be. The modern organic movement is still very new with relatively little empiric testing to serve as it's foundation but there is an enormous amount of anecdotal evidence. That is not to say it has no merit, it most certainly does and deserves study. Until organic has a broader, more solid foundation I cannot preach to anyone as to it's superiority over conventional practices. However, if I find something that works or find that someone has I'm happy to try it myself or share the information. My fruit orcharding is in the slow process of converting, hopefully to completely organic, It will take time as there can be severe disease and insect pressures and I make mistakes. And then there is the weather.

Pluck them off and put in a coffee can. Fill the can with lighter fluid, place at the end of driveway and light. My family used to grow potatoes and eggplant and aside from the commercial pesticides we used, they couldn't all be stopped (especially on the eggplant field), so we'd have to pluck them off in the most devastating times. This was growing up on our farm on Eastern Long Island. Since the potato business is vanishing from LI the last decade the number of Colorado Potato beetle have diminished. Since I moved to KY 10 years ago I have not seen one of these pests since. We once spent 8 hours plucking beetles off 300 or so eggplant plants. I know it not the most lucrative way to remove the pests, but it saved our crop more than once.

I don't know. I didn't mulch with sweetgum leaves or gum balls and didn't have any potato bugs either. Some years they just don't show up, and for me, this was one of those years. Grasshoppers? Tons and tons. They are eating entire tomatoes. I'll find several hoppers on one tomato just chowing down. Luckily, I grow too many tomatoes so they can eat a few and the world won't end. We have had hoppers since around March. I saw them out and about really early. Thought they were bad then. Thought they were really bad in April. Thought they were really, really bad in May. Have been fighting them all along. In June their population began to soar. At this point, I don't think I'm raising veggies, flowers and herbs any more.....I'm raising grasshopper chow and I'm raising a nice crop of grasshoppers. I have never once sprayed a broad-spectrum pesticide in my garden in my entire life, but I am "thisclose" to doing it. Or, I could just abandon the garden to the drought and grasshoppers and throw myself into some other hobby for the rest of the summer. I have a "no potato bug" year about once every 3 or 4 years, and there's no cause-and-effect reason for it that I've ever been able to figure out. In the absence of potato bugs, we did have harlequin bugs, which we've never had before, but it is fairly easy to control them with consistent hand-picking. Dawn